Niek Janssen (University of Toronto)
In the multilingual Ancient Mediterranean, many people experienced first-hand the obstacles presented by linguistic difference. Interpreters were frequently employed to allay such difficulties (Feeney 2015, Mairs 2020, McElduff 2013). Yet despite the international scope of Greco-Roman literature, such interpreters are practically erased from the literary record. This erasure is symptomatic of an “ideology of translators’ invisibility”—the idea that the interpreter’s duty is to robotically process source-language input into target-language output, while hiding his own labor of mediation as much as possible (Venuti 1995).
It is comedy, a genre that revels in flouting conventions of narrative economy and mimetic decorum, that offers foreign language interpreters a place in the spotlight. Four extant plays—Acharnians, Birds, Poenulus and the Charition Mime—portray foreign language speakers. Other characters translate the foreign language; but each time, the audience is left to wonder whether these translations are accurate. The idea of the traddutore as a possible traditore, whose political allegiances are always in doubt because he is by definition rooted in multiple communities, was as pervasive in antiquity as it is today (Mairs 2011). But the translator is not just a potential traitor; his privileged multilingualism amidst monoglots also allows him to go rogue, to pit parties against one another for his own gain.
This paper, using Acharnians and Birds as case studies, argues that this deep-seated anxiety about the possibility of an infidus interpres underpins comedic interpretation scenes. Moreover, it argues that Aristophanes has a metatheatrical purpose in staging these scenarios. The act of foreign language translation, inherently concerned with the limitations of accurate mimesis and audience perception, is analogous to the act of writing comedy itself. In presenting unreliable mediators on the stage, Aristophanes invites viewers to reflect on his own authorial role in invisibly manipulating their experience of the events on stage.
In Acharnians (91-122), an Athenian ambassador interpreting for the Persian Pseudartabas is quickly revealed to be mistranslating for his own financial gain. But the theme of role-playing and unmasking runs deeper, as Pseudartabas is himself revealed to be an Athenian in disguise. Aristophanes is seriously testing the limits of representation (cf. Slater 2002, Compton-Engle 2015). An actor, playing an ambassador, playing the role of interpreter, ventriloquizes a Persian, who is really an Athenian, who is really an actor as well. Through this mimetic mise-en-âbime, Aristophanes asks his audience to consider the constructedness of comedy inself, and to inquire into the invisible force who has designed this vertiginous scenario.
Things get more complicated in Birds, where Hercules translates for a Triballian bird-god. The problem here is that while Hercules does seem to be manipulating the bird’s words to win a discussion with Poseidon, Aristophanes actually leaves ambiguous whether Hercules’ renderings are faithful. The comedian conveys to viewers the anxiety of not knowing whether you understand another, or whether your mediator can be trusted. The playwright thus forces his audience to practice their own faculties of judgment—the same faculties they must employ in evaluating comedic plays, criminal defendants, and politicians.